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hurrengoa
dokoupil, candle painting txuma vazquez   Jiri Dokoupil is a Czech painter. He paints with candles; more specifically with the smoke the candles shed. It was in the 90s when he started using this technique and all over these years has found interest for his pictures in the specific realities surrounding us. Candle paintings or candle drawings steal images from daily routine and through smoke paint he photocopies these images on canvass with utter roughness. �The pictures of the candles are but trying to create small black holes. An imagined room, unmaterialized, difficult to be understood but attractive!�.
(Dokoupil)

He picks a specific subject. Who knows what reasons stand behind the selection of a subject? Merging Banks, traffic pollution, immigration, auctions, sports, cubism, the sea, a coffin, family, leopards and daily objects are the stars of the candle pictures. Later he selects the objects or the protagonists for the pictures. Using his own, or photographs from the media, he projects them on a canvass. After that, Dokoupil�s hands lead the smoke of a candle darkening the shapes shown by the slides. Later he applies alcohol on the canvass following the burnt or not burnt areas as a guide for the picture. The material collected while playing with fire and the tiny groupings of soap air will be slowly taken to the image. In the following years this former technique will have to evolve when different subjects so require. The different technical improvements achieved all over the years haven�t overlapped the interest of the pictures; instead, the materiality of the pictures with their roughness has been shaped for our own sake.
With this technique the picture is photocopied on the canvass again. The picture that comes out though, gives us more than the original. We�ve been fed by the pictures but, how long does a picture last in today�s bombing? We had already forgotten that picture and Dokoupil brings it forward with the roughness process. What the photograph showed now appears with its cruelty. It is really difficult for us to remove our stare from those recreated pictures. There is something of great interest that keeps and leads our eyes on the canvass. The technique itself looses its presence and there is nothing left in the end.


�The most notorious aspect of the printing of the shower is making water with fire. Apart from that these paintings are beautiful naked bodies�.
(Dokoupil)

With this special technique it is finally possible to paint water with fire. Through photography water that has been shaped by gravity and pressure is caught and with fire on the hand alcohol and soap are burnt, dominating the smokepainted water. The elements are controlled without even touching the canvass and like ragged brushes of the caves, full of innocence, he dresses our cave with smoke. Dokoupil plays with that innocence. Or maybe there is more than what we can see on those photocopies. Look at those few examples and let your mind go.

In our pubs� restrooms who art in Heaven,
hallowed be thy writing,
what smoke hath written,
may not be erased by cloth, Amen.

Of course there are many followers of Dokoupil�s technique in Euskal Herria. In the restrooms of the pubs using a lighter on the ceiling and writing for free. Some with good handwriting; most, before burning fingers, barely have time to scribble a couple of lines. We can�t attain Dokoupil�s technique. We can�t create pictures with meaning. But don�t worry, maybe not as Jiri, but our smoke-paints have something. When there�s nothing to read but look up to the ceiling, we�ll find the message someone has written. It hasn�t been addressed to us but that we don�t care; our look, pee, toilet pad is outdistanced from the floor full of fags and dirtiness and that is enough. Keep on working, artists from EH, the people are with you. But please, forget about the old drawings and see if we can start seein beautiful leopards.